not to drown but to deliver
by sweetwatersong
Summary: She trusts three things: her skills, her ship, her sea. Do not ask more of her than that until all three have failed her. [Pirate!Natasha and merman!Clint.]


**not to drown but to deliver**  
rating: pg  
characters: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanoff  
warning: canon-level violence  
summary: She trusts three things: her skills, her ship, her sea. Do not ask more of her than that (until all three have failed her). [Pirate!Natasha and merman!Clint.]

author's note: Set in the compass rose 'verse. Takes place before lies the ocean whispered and compass rose. For crazy4orcas... kind of.

_not to drown but to deliver_

Strike, parry, block; the movements are second nature, the daggers extensions of her hands that compensate for the pistol lying on the slick wood two lengths away, just out of reach. She whirls and sends her weight into the blow against the marauder's sword, sending him off balance even as she regains her own footing in the saltwater and blood. These vultures think her ship weak, her crew prey; her lip curls at the thought. She will teach them the error of their ways.

But when she goes to slit the filthy seaman's throat, a slim shape appears in the corner of her vision. The _Swordbeak'_s first mate, whip-thin and moving as easily in the blood as if on a dry deck, deceptively narrow sword held ready.

Natasha knows the danger of that sword; she has seen at least two good men die on it this day.

No time for the pistol, no time for a call to Barnes, no time to retreat or find a better position. She is the captain of this ship, and she will not run from the Frenchman, not even at the cost of her life.

But the hand at her feet is not dead, simply stunned, and the Frenchman maneuvers her so her back is to the sea - which should be safe, should be protection - so when the dark-skinned sailor kicks her feet out from under her, the _Swordbeak_'s officer runs her through and over the railing.

For a moment there is only the ocean, blue flashing before her in the form of a clear sky and the rippling sea that waits to embrace her. Natasha hears a roar, knows that Barnes has seen her go over - her crew has seen her go over - but there will be no rescue, no rope thrown to her reaching hand. The _Swordbeak'_s men will watch to make sure she drowns before help comes; will help her along with a pistol shot to the head, if they need to.

The bodies in the water around her are proof of that.

Then there is pain, from the impact, from the hole torn through her side, and the cold slap of water that pulls her down. She gasps - she cannot help it - and the air bubbles from her lungs to escape, to flee and leave her choking.

A hand wraps around hers, sending fear and flight past the tumult of signals, and Natasha stills. But it isn't a corpse that has tangled with her, isn't the soul of one she has wronged come to take her down; in the depths a familiar face is looking back at her.

_Clint_ is looking back at her.

He tips his head, clearly trying to convey a message in the silence of the ocean. She stays still a moment more, a heartbeat more - and with her chest aching, with the surface only feet away, nods.

The merman turns, shark tail gliding through the water so they're facing shadows - facing the sleek hull of the _Widower_ - before he begins swimming, effortlessly towing her beside him. Natasha's lungs burn, panic clawing at her throat even as she ruthlessly stamps it out, her fingers laced with the so-very-human hands she is putting her life in - and then they are curving upwards, arrowing towards the stern and daylight, sunlight, _air_.

When she breaks through the waves, throwing her head back to gasp hungrily for breath, she's not sure if a sea breeze has ever felt so good.

Clint waits as she recovers, ignoring the fire lacing through her abdomen, and his face is serious when she finally focuses on it, his normal amusement absent. She doesn't need to wonder at what has prompted the expression; the battle going on above decks, the blood he can surely taste from her wound are surely sufficient.

What she wonders, in the distant part of her mind, is why he cares.

He catches her gaze and nods to the elaborate carving that winds down the stern, stretching from the deck railing to the waterline and passing by her own broad windows. There are handholds here, provided by the curling knots and twisting loops; enough, as they have found, for someone to climb from the ocean onto the deck. The few times before that someone has been Clint, rising to her quarters pass on information or a packet from the seafolk; now, it seems, it will be her turn.

Her time to reclaim her ship, from the godsdamned scavengers who have tried to take it.

They don't speak; sound carries all too well on the water, as the shouts and pistol shots ringing around them prove. Natasha nods to him, readying to begin the journey - and realizes her fingers are still intertwined with Clint's.

He notices and releases her, meeting her gaze again once they are separated. She takes a slow breath, feeling the first sign of dizziness from blood loss… and begins the climb, leaving the merman in red-streaked water below.

The crew recounts the story time and time again in the coming years, of turning towards the stern to see their supposedly dead captain drawing a sword from a marauder's body. They say the blood spread like a brilliant flower across her shirt, that her hair fell with matching brightness across her shoulders; that there was a fire in her eyes which stopped men in their tracks as she stood tall, stood proud, the sea rolling off of her shoulders, and told the invaders to _get the hell off her ship_.

They swear to landsmen and new hands alike that the ocean placed their captain back on the _Widower'_s deck, such was her rage and her passion, and the Widow smiles faintly when she hears them speak of it.

She does not dispute it.

(The marauders safely aboard their own battered vessel, her crew tending to the dead and dying, she limps to the stern and lifts a hand to the sea below.

By the time that Barnes comes to bring her below decks, there is no sign that a merman had ever been waiting in the ocean to see her safe, to see her sound.)

_fin_


End file.
